A/N: For Maevemauvaise. I hope you have a lovely, lovely birthday and I want to thank you so very much for all of the support and inspiration you give me.
I wanted to write you a collection of fairy tales, but then I remembered how many lovely and talented people there are in our fandom, so I recruited them to create lovely things for you as well. So this is just one of many.
A/N 2: I have… problems with Sleeping Beauty, but I wanted to see if I could make it into something I liked, and I hope it's something that you love.
A/N 3: So… a futuristic sci-fi retelling, with a verse similar to Firefly/Serenity/Star Wars. Obviously AU. Translations at the end.
A/N 4: A HUGE thanks to Ro for beta reading this for me.
Pairings: 3x5, background: 3x4, 1x3, 3x6, 1x6
Warnings: angst, language, dub-con, sexy times
Sleeping Beauty- Part 6
It took the better part of a day to travel from the L4 Sector to the L5 Debris Cluster. Quatre had laughed at the suggestion they take the Scythe, and Rashid, who had elected to not include himself in the Maganac slaughter, had muttered something about never stepping foot on that tin can again.
Duo's muttered, "That can be arranged," was more habit than anything else, as he seemed dead on his feet and offered no protest when Quatre insisted they take the Sandrock, a pleasure yacht that both Duo and Trowa were all too familiar with.
"Trowa can pilot the shuttle, and he will need Chang." Quatre paused and raked considering eyes over the other man.
He was finally clothed, looking ill at ease in the traditional desert garb that Quatre preferred to wear. Trowa couldn't help but admire the way the white tunic and loose linen pants hung on his body, but he could certainly appreciate Chang's dislike of his enemy's clothing.
"Then again," Quatre murmured, tapping one finger on his own lips, "Trowa doesn't need Chang yet. Perhaps he can keep me entertained."
Trowa stepped forward without thinking, trying to put himself between the two men, and Quatre regarded him with amusement.
"Oh? You don't like the idea of sharing your ji bu?" he asked.
"He's not-"
"If you even attempt to lay a hand on me, I will ensure that you are the absolute last of your line," Chang spoke up, voice deadly, making it clear that he didn't need Trowa's intercession at all.
Quatre laughed and shook his head.
"You two are quite the well-matched set. Very well. Rashid will escort you to the cockpit and make sure everything goes as it should."
He turned to regard Duo and Relena.
"I'll trust you to keep an eye on her," Quatre said.
Duo laughed and lifted his eyebrows.
"You'll what?"
Quatre tilted one of his own eyebrows at Duo's tone.
"If you allow her to escape, I will kill Hilde. If you allow her to contact anyone, I will kill Hilde. If you so much as think about laying a hand on her, I-"
Duo held up a hand.
"I got it. You'll kill Hilde."
"No. I trust you remember what happened with Iria."
Duo's entire body seemed to slump.
They had only been working for Quatre for a few months, had just come back from a cargo run, and Quatre had been in a mood, had decided to take it out on Duo when he offered up one comeback too many, and Iria, the sister closest to Quatre in age and furthest from him in temperament, had come to Duo's aid. She had wiped the blood from his face, had admonished Quatre gently, and somehow he had allowed it.
Trowa didn't know how Duo and Iria had managed to keep it hidden for so long, but eight months later, Quatre took vicious pleasure in telling Duo that Iria had been killed, on his orders, for debasing herself.
"Well?"Quatre prompted.
Duo swallowed hard, looked away from Quatre, and nodded.
"Good."
Confident that his orders would be carried out, Quatre turned on his heel and headed towards the mess hall.
Perhaps ordering the murder of his most faithful servants had given him an appetite.
Trowa led the way to the cockpit, Chang on his heels, Rashid bringing up the rear.
He settled himself in the pilot's chair and glanced over the familiar control panel. He initiated the launch sequence from memory.
While Duo was by far the superior pilot, Trowa knew how to fly, and he had spent countless hours in this very cockpit, shuttling Quatre around the Earth-Sphere, moving illicit cargo, evading IF patrols.
He quickly computed their flight path. He could, he knew, take them around the Earth's orbit, using the larger gravitational mass to slingshot them towards the L5 Debris Cluster and save time and fuel. Or he could take the traditional approach, a straight line that would take them between the Sun and Earth. It wasn't as quick, but then, Trowa wasn't sure that shaving a few hours off of their flight was so important. Perhaps it might even be better to take the longer route - it would certainly give Trowa and Duo more time to figure out how the hell to get out of this.
Chang stood, looking over his shoulder, and he arched an eyebrow as Trowa typed in the coordinates for the longer route. Trowa turned to him, but Chang merely nodded and stepped back.
Trowa wasn't entirely sure what that meant - except that Chang clearly knew that there was another route they could have taken.
Nav loaded and flight systems ready, Trowa eased the Sandrock out of her berth and into space.
One of the perks of being a ruthless dictator over your sector was that you didn't have to go through any administrative red tape when you wanted to launch.
They weren't even queried as they pulled away, and Trowa angled the Rock for space and pushed her speed up to intergrav cruising.
And then he settled in to wait.
"I don't suppose you play chess?" Trowa asked, turning to Chang and arching an eyebrow.
"It's been… awhile since I've played," Chang murmured, and it took Trowa a second to realize he was making a joke.
He was startled into laughing, and felt ridiculously pleased when Chang offered a smug little smirk in his direction.
Rashid, lounging on the passenger couch at the back of the cockpit, muttered something under his breath that Trowa didn't even need to hear to know it was derogatory.
Chang flushed, but he sat down in the co-pilot's chair, and Trowa pulled up the holographic chess game that he himself had loaded into the Rock's system years ago.
Duo had been his most frequent opponent, the two of them playing to pass the time during long flights, and Trowa's partner played the game with the same kind of recklessness that made him so easy to underestimate - that made him so dangerous an opponent, because it was almost always too late when his rash moves were revealed to be actual strategy.
But Trowa had also played against Quatre a few times, usually after sex, occasionally as a precursor, always when Quatre experienced his too-rare desire for Trowa to be more than a body to be used.
Unlike Duo, whose strategies only became obvious after the fact, Quatre played chess with obvious precision and flair, weaving complicated gambits across the board, and more than once Trowa had beaten him just by letting Quatre defeat himself.
Chang played like neither of them. Trowa had expected him to be blunt - had expected Chang to attempt to force his way across the board with the same kind of anger that Trowa had already seen him exhibit.
He was wrong.
After Trowa lost the third game in a row - over in a paltry twenty minutes - Chang looked up at him with a smirk.
"You aren't used to losing, are you?"
"Not at this," Trowa muttered.
Chang's lips twisted at that, but he nodded in what might have been understanding.
"Perhaps we should raise the stakes," Chang suggested.
Trowa arched an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware there were stakes at the moment."
"There is always something at stake," Chang murmured. "Master Long used to-" He caught himself, lips compressing into a grimace, and Trowa felt the alien urge to offer him comfort.
"What sort of stakes?" Trowa asked, trying to distract both of them. "I'm a little light on creds at the moment." He patted the pocket of his jacket to demonstrate, and his hand encountered something unexpected.
Frowning, he reached into his pocket and curled his fingers around it.
Bastard.
Chang seemed not to notice Trowa's change in demeanor.
"When I win, I'd like you to tell me more about your partner - Duo."
Trowa arched an eyebrow at that, but he shrugged.
"You don't have to win for me to do that."
"I won't be asking drivel like his food preferences," Chang pointed out. "I need to know what kind of man he is," he added, and flicked his eyes toward Rashid in warning.
Trowa nodded, wondering if this had something to do with the lie he had told about Duo opening the stasis capsule.
"When I win-"
"If," Chang corrected him with a small smile.
Trowa rolled his eyes.
"If," he agreed, "I win, I'd like to know your name."
Chang stilled, and Trowa was sure he would call it off, but instead, he nodded in acceptance.
"Very well."
-o-
The L5 Debris Cluster, referred to as the Graveyard or Yard by most spacers, had been pillaged by pirates and Sweepers for the last two hundred years.
Still, no one had had the resources or interest in clearing the debris from nearly two hundred colonies and satellites that had fallen into disrepair or been destroyed in the final battles before the plague that wiped out all of the sector's inhabitants spread and put an end to the fighting.
Asteroids and meteors had done damage to most of the intact colonies - Trowa had heard that there were only three colonies that weren't exposed to hard vacuum leaks.
He had never done salvage in the Yard before. Duo had - once - and sworn he never would again. There was a reason, he had told Trowa, that it was called the Graveyard, and it had nothing to do with dead machinery.
"Where are we going?" Quatre asked, having made his appearance in the cockpit during their approach to the Yard and was now taking up a position directly behind Trowa's chair.
Duo and Relena had also joined them, Duo looking like he had managed to get in at least a little sleep or a lot of caffeine.
"Can I see the nav panel?" Chang asked.
Trowa leaned to the side, making room for the other man to reach over and type in a set of coordinates.
"There," he said, and tapped the screen when a red sphere appeared.
Duo leaned forward.
"Can't be right - there's nothing at that location. At least there wasn't anything there four years ago."
"Perhaps your powers of observation are lacking," Chang suggested.
Duo looked offended and he opened his mouth, but Trowa cleared his throat. Now was not the time to pick a fight with the one man who might not be plotting their murders.
He guided the Rock towards the coordinates, proximity alarms going off every few minutes.
Since none of the colonies were functioning, with no power going to their gravitational generators or orbit adjustments, over the last two hundred years they had all gradually started to orbit True L5, the exact LaGrange point on which the entire sector revolved.
It made for tricky piloting, and Trowa could see Duo's fingers out of the corner of his eye, tightening on the back of Chang's chair every so often. He could feel his partner's desire to take over, and he was actually impressed that Duo didn't try to step in.
"See?" Duo said twenty minutes later when they were nearly on top of the coordinates Chang had programmed. "Nothing here."
"It's a wonder you haven't flown into the sun," Chang muttered under his breath.
"Wángbādàn," Duo retorted.
Trowa searched the viewport, but all he could see was, remarkably, empty space. He frowned at that. They weren't out of the Yard yet - there were still several kilometers of debris to navigate through - but he saw none of that.
He looked over at Chang, who arched an eyebrow at him.
"You developed a cloaking device powerful enough to shield an entire colony?"
Chang looked smug as he nodded.
"No fucking way," Duo breathed and leaned closer, angling for a better view. "I'll be damned. Look at that - dead space for," he crouched down so he could look directly above them, "holy shit. How big is this colony?"
"Our largest," Chang said with pride. "And the intact cloak means that the hull hasn't been breached by meteorites."
Trowa frowned. "Wait, what's powering it?"
"The sun," Chang said, his voice and expression indicating that any child should have guessed that.
"But converting that energy-" Duo started to say, and then stopped himself. "Huh. I guess that transducer wasn't a myth, either, was it?"
"It's nice to know that some truths have been passed down with all of the myths," Chang muttered.
Duo grinned. At him. "Don't much care for being called a princess, eh?"
Chang's only response was a fierce glare.
Trowa flew the Rock closer to the void in front of them, praying that they breached the cloak before they got too close. He was good, but he didn't have Duo's lightning quick reflexes, and it would be a shame to come so far only to have them all die as he rammed the shuttle into the colony's hull.
Thankfully, it was only a moment later when the space in front of them shimmered and then dissolved to reveal what was, undoubtedly, the largest colony Trowa had ever seen.
And the Changs had built this two hundred years ago. Had designed a mammoth colony that was able to sustain its orbit and, presumably, had enough power to create gravity and atmo on a scale that Trowa knew most engineers only dreamed about.
"Where do I dock?" Trowa asked as the Rock flew closer, skimming over the colony that, in addition to being larger than any Trowa had ever seen, wasn't spherical.
Almost all colonies were spherical, though some had recently begun to explore new options that involved counter-rotating sections. This one, though...
"It's a cylinder. No, two cylinders," Duo said, sounding like a kid playing with a new toy. "What- how does it work?"
"The cylinders counter-rotate - and that outer ring is for agriculture, and rotates at a different speed so that-"
"We aren't here for an engineering lecture," Quatre broke in. "Where are we docking?"
"Near the south - the base of the orbital mirrors. That's where we need to be."
Trowa angled the Rock in that direction.
"Holy fuck," Duo breathed. "Is there- are there schematics I can look at?"
"You'll be too dead to read them," Rashid muttered.
It was an unnecessary confirmation that Quatre would likely kill them all as soon as he no longer needed them.
"I need him," Chang reminded them. "If you want access to your treasure, I need Duo."
"See?" Duo taunted Rashid. "I'm special."
Trowa eased the Rock into a docking berth at Chang's instruction, and then powered down the ship.
"Let's get into EVA suits," Quatre instructed.
"You won't need to," Chang stood up. "The colony's atmospheric generator was designed to last a millennium."
Quatre sneered. "Forgive me for not trusting my life to the word of a Chang."
The other man's lips twitched, but he nodded and started out of the cockpit, the others falling into step behind him.
Trowa took one last look out of the viewport, at the dim berth where he had docked, and he couldn't help but notice that, though it was dim, the berth was not dark.
And as they had flown over the colony, he had seen lights dancing along the surface.
This colony was fully powered, and Trowa was willing to bet, fully habitable.
"Did you-" Duo hung back, caught his sleeve, and jerked his head towards the viewport.
Trowa nodded, but didn't risk saying anything.
He gave Duo a significant look, hoping his partner was prepared for what waited for them.
-o-
End note: the colony is based on the O'Neill Cylinder model, which oddly enough, is the same model used in the Universal Century for Gundam. They are fascinating and I encourage you to look them up.
Translations:
wángbādàn: Bastard.
Please consider supporting me on ( dot com backslash ClaraBarton)